Ireland, more wind energy than demand

[JohnB]

What the UK wants is to find nuclear solution that is internationally adopted, and deploy many of them. We have a history of going our own way, or even if do adopt a foreign solution, picking one of each design initially.

If Rolls Royce have a realistic chance of being a global player for these reactors, its worth the government putting in the seed capital, but I expect its the aircraft carrier problem, everyone qualified in the field from the Navy to the defence contractors to the Ministry of Defence want one, only the Treasury does not, so they collude to hide the costs to get it agreed, and feign surprise when the costs balloon.

[BullDog]

Paul.

Obviously the jury is out on SMRs. I wish RR all the best and I wish the government would cease procrastinating with a silly competition for a contact.

But..... I have worked all my life in large scale energy projects. Some of the largest ever built. And I do not believe that the cast iron rule of economy in scale can be avoided with respect to nuclear power plants.

AIUI the advantage of SMRs is that theoretically ..... they can be built and deployed faster, smaller means more choice of location and fewer installation challenges, they are more flexible in terms of demand response - quicker to shut down and power up, and have a lower frequency of refuelling. Coupled with our distribution network being inadequate for Net Zero, more localised generation would alleviate some of the problems.

There's also the hope that as these don't take a decade or so to get on the ground, the initial costs might actually bear some resemblance to the original predictions. Hinkley C which has gone from an original £18bn to £33bn, and is about 6 years behind the original 6 year schedule, so costs will doubtless rise further. I do wonder why major project like this always go over time and budget considering the amount spent on the fesibility studies. I blame the smoking ban meaning the consultants are working it out on napkins rather than fag packets.

But whether these advantages actually manifest themselves by the time the govt has gone through all the assessment and tendering processes and they get to production stage is another matter. I don't think the issues are technological, but political and regulatory.

Paul

Correct. There are no technological issues. I am convinced that I'm unlikely to see an SMR built by RR in my lifetime. Which is dreadful really. We can't build a railway any more. We certainly can't build the vast majority of things used in a nuclear power plant of any size you choose. Everything will be imported. Just about. Just like Hinckley C is.

[sunnyjoe]

The Irish (just like most European and other advanced countries) are very competent at managing their energy systems.

They have a target to achieve 80% of electricity consumption from renewable energy by 2030 (they already achieved >40%).
https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/s ... urity%20of

EirGrid (the Irish equivalent of National Grid) has a plan to facilitate this target
https://www.eirgridgroup.com/the-grid/s ... tricity-f/

They also have a view on the adequacy of generation over that period
http://www.eirgridgroup.com/site-files/ ... 2-2031.pdf
Significant challenges noted

and on the adequacy of the transmission network
https://www.eirgridgroup.com/site-files ... S-2021.pdf